Vol. 78/No. 1      January 6, 2014

Special Prosecutor Rafael Bombino, who handles Chicago police torture cases, dropped all charges against Wrice Dec. 12.

“I am very happy that Stanley Wrice has been released and is now working with the Innocence Project to help others win release also,” Mark Clements, a leader of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, told the Militant. Clements spent 28 years in jail from a forced confession tortured out of him before winning release.

“What happened to Wrice was pure legal lynching by a system that permitted it openly and freely until it was boxed in and forced to do what it should have done for decades,” Clements said.

After two unsuccessful appeals, Wrice appealed a third time in October 2007, following a 2006 Special Prosecutor’s report detailing systematic torture in the Chicago Police department.

That report set in motion the chain of events that led to the June 2010 conviction of Chicago Police Lt. Jon Burge on federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about the torture in a civil lawsuit. In January 2011 Burge was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

In February 2012, the Illinois Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Wrice. In January of this year, after granting prosecutors’ numerous continuances, Judge Evelyn Clay, a former Cook County prosecutor herself, scheduled Wrice’s hearing for Sept. 23.

In July Wrice’s attorneys sought to subpoena former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Cook County State’s Attorney at the time of Wrice’s frame-up, and Illinois Appellate Justice Bertina Lampkin, who was then Daley’s subordinate and handled Wrice’s case, to testify about their knowledge of torture under Burge.

Judge Clay recused herself, citing her relationship with the two potential witnesses. Cook County Criminal Court officials assigned the case to Walsh, a juvenile court judge. Walsh ruled prior to throwing out Wrice’s conviction that Daley would not have to testify. Lampkin, however, did take the stand.

In a related development, Judge Paul Biebel heard oral arguments Dec. 16 on a petition filed in October 2012 seeking a class-action trial on behalf of more than 100 Illinois inmates whose convictions are based on confessions extracted under cop torture.

Biebel said he would announce his decision in March.
 
 
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‘Release all those tortured by Chicago cops’
 
 
 
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